cimorene

The last class meeting of the year is over, though not without its difficulties. For one thing, there was ham and mushroom pie even though at Christmas, when the organizer collected a list of dietary restrictions, I put down "vegetarian".

For another, there was a boring "brainstorming session" about the "possibilities" of the field of classroom assistanthood which then swerved into a long digression about how society is going to the dogs because children today don't instantly and unquestioningly obey every adult they encounter like they did when she was a child, presumably in the 1950s, but instead question orders and differentiate between adults with legitimate authority over them (teachers, school directors) and adults who just happen to be nearby (janitorial staff, strangers visiting the school). She tried to list as a positive example the fact that as a child she would unquestioningly go run errands when ordered to by her neighbors, and a negative one that today's children in daycare will not obey orders given by some random person who walks up to the fence when they're on the playground. Wait, you say, what?

A former childcare professional and now director of a program for educating childcare professionals expressed that daycare children should obey the orders of random adult strangers who approach them on the playground.

... WTF? This reaches new levels of brain-dead uncritical nostalgia for decades past. Those were decades before parents taught their children not to talk to/ take candy from strangers, and certainly not to do whatever they say just because they're adults.

Oh, and then she also ranted about how in daycare they sit in circles and go around taking turns and sharing and she thinks the fact that children are encouraged to give their opinions about anything is probably related to how they don't respect their elders. ... o_O WHAT.

So... allowing children to take turns talking at daycare is destroying society? I didn't previously realize that she was actually crazy. This is like the stuff spouted by your crazy great-grandmother (who on a few disastrous visits tried to order my then-toddler sister to sit still at the dinner table, which, hello, toddler!).